It's Infectious, Until it Gets Too Hard

Neighbor Zack is a pretty great neighbor. He introduced himself right away to us as we moved in, offers all kinds of neighbor help, lets my kids tear through his yard... and even forgives me for the creeping charlie which has dominated my lawn and is poised to challenge his. He has not only tolerated my garden zeal but taken a bit of his own interest as well - he and his kids grow a thing or two in their dappled shade raised beds.

This year he approached me with an offer I couldn't refuse: to let him dig up my backest yard into a cornfield for us to share. Did I refuse? No, in fact I did not; and also did most of the work involved in cultivating, planting, and tending our little corn and pumpkin patch.

poof, now you see it. 

The new garden is doing quite well, despite endless heckling from Neighbor Randy and Neighbor Mark. We have tall stalks and tassles, which are surprisingly beautiful; and what's more, pumpkins on the way. 

ah yes, quite nice.

It pleases me to see less grass and I'm already plotting for the start of my restoration project next spring. Admittedly, though, for every square inch of sod I remove, I get six cubic inches of charlie. And what's more, pumpkin vines look like creeping charlie with elephantitis. It's a bit disturbing.

Sometimes I Call on my Friends, and They Really Come Through

So, this summer I got really tangled up in garden dreams. I knew I wanted a raised bed vegetable garden, and thanks to my husband, my parents, and the very gracious Kayla and Micah, I had that by the end of May. It could have been enough - at least enough for the year, since I had firmly decided to take it slow with the gardening.

It began so innocently: I just read a few books about garden planning (see post below) to help me place my seeds and transplants. They served that purpose, all the while whispering temptations in my ear - create a space! create a vision! transform your oversized lawn into something really special! I started the summer as a gardener, but by July I had inadvertently become a landscaper. oops.

To make a long story short, I decided we needed a patio between the raised beds. As it stood, the lawn between the beds was very difficult and time consuming to mow (directly opposing my goals of less lawn fuss) and looked rather scruffy up against the cedar boards. It wasn't a complete idea... it was a loose scattering of garden beds and not a garden in the high-minded conception of my garden design books.

ratty beginnings

First there was lawn, then the hideous and embarrassing process of solarization - killing the grass with heat through black plastic sheets for six weeks (no pictures of this, too ugly). Meanwhile, Ben took four trips to Forest Lake for craigslist pavers. My hard-working, ever-giving father came out in August to help us excavate - we dug down around the beds 5-6 inches, leaving dull, hard-pack clay walkways and beds on stilts. The garden sat in this phase for another month, thanks in part to The Incident (will I write about this?), and the ugliness continued.

watch your step

Finally, one Friday morning, we decided to just lay the patio on Saturday. Mom and Dad were booked, and they couldn't come help us, so Ben and I decided to man up and do it - have the paver base delivered, rent the tampers, see if a few friends would help us make it happen.

I sent out three emails for help on Friday morning; on Saturday morning, five willing and able bodies showed up at my door.

Farrah "womans" the rock-sled - yes, we are still moving rocks.

"driveway trap"

level, scrutinize, water, tamp, tamp, add more, thanks Holly, Nicole, and the missing Matt L

the (mostly) finished work at dusk 

it's a place now. "Esther's bedroom" to be precise

Esther and Michael are nowhere to be seen in these photos, courtesy of my dear friend Brittany, who was an awesome playmate for them - until she had to go home and "take her nap too."

It's really humbling to have such good and generous friends, who will work hard, sweat, and get sore side-by-side with you because you didn't have any idea what you were getting yourself into. 

Did I Mention Raspberries

The raspberries came before the raised beds, thanks to Pedro, my accomplished neighbor gardener. I enthusiastically planted them way too close together on a way too short fence one day when Esther was with her cousins. We got berries this year in spite of my enthusiasm, though I must admit that Michael ate most of them while they were still green.

See them? on the right in front of the maple tree.

Shrubs Were a Consideration

I love growing vegetables. For a long time I didn't think any other kind of gardening was worthwhile - I thought flowers were frivolous, wasting space that could otherwise be used to fill bellies, and I didn't hardly know the meaning of the word "shrub." Of course that had to change when I found myself a suburban homeowner with an enormous lot of grass, grass, grass. Some shrubs were provided (sad and spindly bridal veil, poorly placed peonies, a beautiful pair of lilacs in back awaiting the ax, and something I suspect to be rhododendron) but my biomass consisted mostly of a few shade trees and a bunch of tenaciously suckering weed trees.
For Mother's Day I went to Fleet Farm and spent way too much money on bushes and shrubs. Happy Mother's Day to me. First, a forsythia, the one shrub I've known I would plant as soon as I owned a spot of land. This was a beast to place - I wanted it near the front door, which meant scraping away layers of rock and landscaping plastic, relocating a peony to a spot beneath layers of rock and landscaping plastic, and finally regretting how close I put the forsythia to the front door. But now I have a forsythia, and I can't wait for next spring.

Then there were three blueberry bushes. OKAY, not shrubs, but shrub-like, especially considering their bonus vocation as foundation screen. I haven't had my soil tested but I believe it's acidic, in part because the blueberries are killin' it in my lightly amended clay soil.

I also bought a red currant from fleet farm for $10. Who could resist a fruit bush for $10? No, not me. Thanks to my mom who, after weeks of that poor currant sitting in its pot, pointed out the perfect location for it to grow. It anchors the front corner of our yard and balances out the vegetable beds.

The spirea (bridal veil) gave us a lovely bloom in the spring, but sadly the blooms were like a toupee on a mass of lifeless branches. I thank Carol from the Guthrie for suggesting I rejuvenate the poor things. We cut them back drastically, down to 6" from the ground. As I write, they are lush as chia pets in my lawn. I'm talking seven little chia pets, green and bushy and wild.

So I Got Some Friends Together and Put In a Kitchen Garden

I'm a garden voyeur. In the summer you can catch me walking through alleys, peeping over fences at any little garden in the neighborhood. I want to see what people prioritize in their gardens, what kind of veggies they eat, how they structure their growing space. I look for answers to questions I didn't know I had, for great new ideas, and for really, really bad ideas. I am learning how many decisions go into the making of a garden, and how every decision is a reflection of the gardener and the gardener's community; peeking into a stranger's garden is a little bit of peeking into their life. It's an intimate glance at best, invasive in the worst case.
We put our garden in the front yard so that nobody would have to feel like a voyeur if they wanted to look.  And the day we put it in, it felt like the whole neighborhood was looking. They asked us where we bought our beds (we built them from lumber at Siwek's in NE), why we were arranging our beds the way we did, what we were going to plant in our beds. "VEGGIES" I said. Kayla and Micah came over that Sunday morning. The men built beds and played Kubb, the women dug sod and forked dirt. I was foreman, telling everyone what to do and where to put things, and cook, making sure the kids had snacks and the volunteers had beer and spaghetti. We worked all day, drew lots of attention, got four raised beds built, sited, and forked, then we showered and drove to brats at John L's. My muscles quivered from it all.

Some early days in the vegetable patch:

so enthusiastic